


I Built This Ship to Wreck

by darknesscrochets



Series: Rainbow Souls [6]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mentioned Canonical Character Death, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, canonical complicated earhart sentiments towards the kobolds but i tried not to get too into that, it’s 174 what do you expect, major character death warning is… complicated, not beta read we just flat out die, slightly less canon compliant than the rest of this series, spoilers for 174
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28021386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darknesscrochets/pseuds/darknesscrochets
Summary: TheVengeance--though if it could talk, it would tell you it’s theReliant--comes alive, during the first trip through the wild magic aurora.Everything with a soul leaves a mark, and theReliant, though its life is short, is no different.
Series: Rainbow Souls [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1999660
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	I Built This Ship to Wreck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheAllKnowingOwl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAllKnowingOwl/gifts).



> for Tako; you know what you did. enjoy :)

The ship that has been called the _Vengeance_ , the _Reliant_ , and myriad other names before, did not have a soul when it was first built. 

It did not have one when its current self was constructed, either; though it was closer than before, rebuilt by many hands and touched by many souls. Through all of Earhart’s time captaining her ship, the marks it left were indelible, but invisible.

After the first time they pass through the aurora, the crew finds marks on the ship. Swathes of color that weren't there before. 

Earhart notices this, even in someone else’s body. _Especially_ in someone else’s body--kobolds, she has to admit, have better eyesight than she does as a gnome. Colors are brighter. They stand out, stark against the wood and metal that make up the bones of the ship. Her ship.

She would ask Zolf if something happened in the aurora, as the only crewmember on deck, but her first mate is busy dealing with their… current predicament. 

Stray colors, stray marks… they can’t be that important, in the grander scheme things. Keep the ship running, get people back into their proper bodies--they can deal with whatever this is later.

It’s a reasonable list of priorities, with the knowledge Earhart has at the time. She doesn’t know that the ship won’t _have_ a later. 

As the captain of the ship, Earhart tends to stay away, stay aloof. She needs her crew to see her as infallible--untouchable--as much as possible, so that they don’t question her commands. 

(It was easier before, with a crew she had a real camaraderie with. They’re all dead, dead and gone to the very last crewmate, and her soulmarks grey with them. She does what she has to do, to protect herself and her quest for revenge. She can’t risk getting too close and losing sight of what’s _important_.)

She talks to Sassraa, though. She owes them. When they enter her cabin, their eyes alight on a reddish-gold mark on Tadyka’s scales. It shines, sometimes, out of the corner of her eye. Earhart has been avoiding looking at it, at _any_ of Tadkya’s marks, too closely; some like to keep their soulmarks private, and she doesn’t know what the marks might mean to the kobolds, or to Tadyka in particular.

Reading her own face is… strange, to say the least, but Sassraa seems surprised. Their discussion is short, and Sassraa doesn’t say anything about the mark before they leave the cabin. 

Earhart doesn’t ask.

Zolf brings it up the next day, in his usual report. (She knows he leaves things out. He’s never had the skill for subtlety. She tries not to rub at the sky-blue mark on her bicep when she talks to him; she can’t afford to have a tell. Even with her first mate.)

Zolf talks to her, though. And he brings up the marks. 

Not just the ones on the ship, though she’d noticed those. There are new soulmarks on the crew, ones that they know weren't there before. Marks that shine strangely, with a metallic sheen, like nothing any of them have ever seen.

Earhart tells him to ignore it. Tells him to keep people calm, keep them working towards a solution to their… situation. She knows Cel well enough by now that they tend to go haring off on strange tangents if they don’t have a set direction. She can’t afford having Cel distracted by a different problem. A less important one.

(If she did ask, though, she might have heard from Cel, about their travels on awakened ships through wild magic in the Americas. Or from Azu, whose village knew that strange things could happen, to homes that sheltered families for generations, touched by dozens of souls. 

She doesn't ask. It's not important.)

And it works, is the thing. Her crew figure it out, and they come back out of the aurora in one piece.

The problem, they quickly realize, is that the ship hasn’t.

Earhart, back in her own body, doesn’t notice the mark on her chest. It’s a bright, bloody red, with an almost metallic bronze sheen to it. It’s barely visible where it peeks out from under the collar of her shirt, and she doesn’t have a glance to spare looking down amongst the chaos of trying to land the ship.

She doesn’t see the metallic shine of the mark disappear as the ship goes down, one engine gone and the other two failing.

She doesn’t hear the ship groan, a sound that can’t just be wood and metal, as she straps herself to the railing.

She doesn’t see how some of the colors--the _soulmarks_ \--on the deck of the ship go dark, as some of her crew are thrown bodily over the side.

She doesn’t see her own mark fade as the ship hits the forest floor. As the bones of the ship shatter, and the _Reliant_ ’s soul goes with it. 

All Earhart knows, in the aftermath of the crash, is that there’s a grey mark on her chest, and a sharp pain in her soul.


End file.
